I have no idea how I'm going to get through today. I woke up at 0430h with a dull, slow throbbing pain on the underside of my left knee. I couldn't get back to sleep. Bending my leg didn't help. Straightening it didn't help. Massaging it did nothing. And I was too tired to get something to prop it up to see if elevating it would help.

It went away when I got up and got going. ={

Why the hell do I always get the mysterious ailments with no cause? I can't have a normal sprain or have simple Carpal Tunnel or scrape my elbow or something easy like that. I have to have weird, inexplicable pain that has no blood markers, doesn't show up EEGs, CAT scans or any other state-of-the-art skookum diagnostic tool known to the entire Medical Community.

The current project I'm on is a bitch. This client used to be a big household name in home and business desktop software. I'm talking on-the-order-of-Microsoft-IBM-and-Apple big. Their flagship product used to be an industry leader. They're still a fairly significant entity, but certainly nowhere near the software giant that they were or could have been. And y'know, if this project is any indication, I'm not surprised that they've mostly disappeared into the fog.

They're trying to make a comeback with this new product. There have been several pebbles in the pond from them in recent months, but this one has the potential for a bigger splash. We're integrating something of ours into their new software package. I'm fairly confident that this thing will never hit the shelf without significant re-design. It's that retarded.

They're basically trying to make up a new programming language that will compile into something that already exists. Putting aside for the moment that this is a Universally Asinine Idea, they have no clue as to the concepts of programming languages, compilers and absolutely no understanding of the target language.

They don't have a proper technical specification for this language - all they gave us is a bunch of snippets of examples with the title "Specification" at the top(!!!). And from talking to them, it's clear that they really don't understand the target language, its object model and what it's used for, etc. because their new language is incommensurably different - ie. it is truly not possible to compile it to the target language without major re-working.

We're trying to talk them through things and make them think of the issues involved in creating a programming language. It's been a slow and painful two months. They've been receptive to it, they know they're idiots and they know we know it. But it still takes time and work to learn something new. And all the while, we're facing their deadlines laid down by their [non-technical] Project Management/Marketing folk.

These are the same PM/Marketing folk that mandate that we send weekly progress reports because we weren't "doing enough". What in blue blazes am I supposed to say? "Well, I didn't get to do any useful work _this_ week either". We can't do any of our work because we're doing all the thinking work that you should have done 3 farking months ago.

Comments

No. So, take that with a grain of salt, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it were him =) Pop singers really don't have much vocal technique. Outside of a recording studio, they're like fish out of water =D